


Baking is Simple, Really

by fortunatelykeendetective



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, John's Birthday, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-01
Packaged: 2018-05-04 09:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5329613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunatelykeendetective/pseuds/fortunatelykeendetective
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets a birthday surprise when Sherlock attempts to bake him a cake. Fluff and schmoop and a little implied nookie. </p><p>Written for the Johnlock Advent Calendar challenge on tumblr.<br/>Prompt: Baking is basically chemistry, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baking is Simple, Really

It’s John’s birthday coming up, and this year, along with making his mum’s pot roast for John like he does every year, Sherlock’s going to attempt to bake John a birthday cake as well. He braved the lines at Sainsbury’s a couple days ago in order to stock up on necessary ingredients. Keeping them all hidden from John, who uses the kitchen for cooking far more often than Sherlock does, has proven to be the far more difficult task.

He has researched the best cake recipes and finally found one that looked foolproof – not that he is a fool, mind you, but he knows cakes are not really his area – from cooks.com and sets about carefully following the instructions. Sherlock is nothing if not a precise measurer. If a recipe calls for six hundred grams of flour, there will by God be six hundred grams of flour. He’s had to rummage around Mrs. Hudson’s kitchen for something he thinks will pass for cake pans. Luckily for him they are in fact cake pans and not some godawful unpronounceable bit of gourmet cookware. He mixes the batter until smooth, just as the instructions say. Once the oven has heated, he gingerly places the cake pans inside and pads down the hall to run himself a bath. By the time he finishes his bath, the cakes should be perfectly baked, and they will cool with just enough time to ice them with some whipped cream before John arrives home from work.

Forty minutes later, Sherlock is out of the bath and wearing his black trousers and the shirt John affectionately calls the Purple Shirt of Sex, not in a small part owing to activities that almost always follow when Sherlock wears it. He smirks to himself as he rolls the sleeves halfway up his forearms. Perfectly coiffed curls, and _voila_! _Let’s see how it will take after John gets home before he shoves me against the wall and snogs me senseless_ , he thinks. _There are worse ways to spend an evening._

Cake out of the oven and icing spread, but not before Sherlock remembers to include one final ingredient, gingerly placing it between the two cake layers.

Candles lit on the table, wine chilled and pot roast in the slow cooker Sherlock also lifted from Mrs. Hudson whilst on his mission to find a cake pan a day or two prior. (Luckily, the slow cooker had come with a label so there was no guesswork on Sherlock’s part as to its function.)

As if on cue, Sherlock hears the footfall on the steps of the man who has become his lover, his heart, his home. John opens the door and finds everything darkened save for the candles Sherlock has lit without managing to set the building ablaze.

“Sherlock, what exactly _is_ all this?”

“Happiest of birthdays, John. There are precisely forty-four candles lit between the kitchen, sitting room, and our bedroom. One for every trip you’ve made around the sun. And before you say anything, I am now _well aware_ of the fact that we are all travelling around the sun at this very moment since you so kindly reminded me those years ago.”

“Right. Good. Now, how _the hell_ have you managed to not burn down the entire block?”

“Careful placement and careful adherence to the laws of thermodynamics. Dinner?”

“Starving.”

After John had inhaled his food in under fifteen minutes – a habit he had yet to unlearn from med school and his days in Her Majesty’s fighting force – Sherlock, who had yet to touch his plate, rose to retrieve John’s birthday cake from the counter.

John’s fork and his jaw dropped simultaneously as he struggled to find words.

“Sherlock….you…. _made that_?”

“Excellent deduction, John. Much easier than I’d presupposed. Anyone with a functional level of literacy can follow a recipe, and baking is simply a function of chemistry and physics.”

Sherlock leaned over the counter to pull a knife out of the kitchen cutlery block, leaving his gorgeous perfect bum dangerously close to John’s face. John couldn’t be sure Sherlock was doing it intentionally, but neither could he be sure Sherlock wasn’t being a first-rate tease.

John cocked his head as Sherlock moved to slice the cake, turning it round and round as though searching the perfect spot at which to cut. Leave it to Sherlock to turn slicing a bloody cake into a problem in need of deep analysis.

“Sherlock….love….can we maybe cut the cake sometime _tonight_?”

“John, this is a matter of precision. I require your cooperation and patience.”

“Yeah, alright. Just….you look bloody gorgeous tonight, and I’d kind of like to unwrap my _other birthday present_  soonish if you catch my meaning. As fine as you look in that shirt and those trousers….wait _, you wore them on purpose, didn’t you_?!”

John’s not sure if he imagined a slight smirk on Sherlock’s face as he served John his piece of birthday cake, having apparently found the perfect slicing location. “Thank you, love.” John might have been in the mood for more than cake but he wasn’t going to abandon basic table manners.

John was pleasantly surprised at the apparent skill his flatmate-turned-soulmate possessed with an oven and some stolen cake pans. Fluffy and moist, icing not too rich, and nothing too sickeningly sweet.

Had that been all of the surprise, John could have called it a most memorable night indeed. But John soon found the reason behind Sherlock’s fussy cake-slicing of a few minutes prior. Something, some piece of metal glinted in John’s dessert, prompting John’s jaw to drop to for at least the second time that evening. “Sher-….what….um…this?” He was not above thinking Sherlock was experimenting with how much dessert a man would ingest before noticing a foreign object in his food. _For a case, John._ With Sherlock Holmes, John had come to expect anything.

Before John could follow that thought to any logical conclusion, Sherlock had leapt across the kitchen and in one motion had swiped the object out of John’s cake.

“John…you’ve likely deduced the reason for my being so insistent about slicing cake earlier. If not, well….you are about to. Before you came along, I had no one. I wasn’t joking when I told you I didn’t have friends. I had built walls in order to insulate myself from the reality that no one knew me at my innermost. You came along and you breathed a need into me of which I was previously unaware. Thanks to you, I became appreciative of the beautiful, observant of the romantic. You healed past hurts that I had pushed aside in the interest of the work and, I suppose, as a matter of self-preservation. Whether it is shooting a cabbie or rescuing me from a crack den or causing the wall around my heart to crumble, you have – truly – saved my life more times than you know.

"What I’m trying to say is…thanks to you, I no longer want to be alone.

"And what I’m asking is,” the clear baritone cracking audibly, eyes brimming over with tears, hand opening up to reveal a ring, “ _John Hamish Watson, will you be my husband?_ ”


End file.
